ABH Subculture: First Impressions

If you’ve read my 19th birthday post, you’ll know I received the extremely controversial ‘Subculture’ palette from Anastasia Beverly Hills. I was super excited to try this out and to see whether all the negative things I’d been hearing about this product were true.

Appearance-wise, the palette is gorgeous. I love the blue and mustard yellow combination on the packaging and was really intrigued by the colour combination of the shadows. The Modern Renaissance was definitely a more ‘typical’ palette for me, the shades being slightly safer as I’m used to using more warm-toned shadows. But, I loved the Autumn vibes Subculture was giving and wanted to branch out and start creating different makeup looks.

The first thing I did when I opened the palette was swatch the shadows. Of course, being ABH, they were EXTREMELY pigmented and all of the swatches seen pictured are only one swipe-worth of product. I’ve heard others labelling them ‘chalky’ which, I have to admit, I did find but only in certain shadows (mainly the darker ones but also Roxy). However, I wasn’t too surprised or appalled at this as I found exactly the same with my Modern Renaissance palette.

When applying the shadows, I did find them harder to blend and work with than the Modern Renaissance and other products (such as my Makeup Geek eyeshadows), but they are not the worst things I’ve ever used on my eyes. The colour pay off is amazing, due to the pigmentation and I especially like shades such as Roxy, All Star and New Wave. I’ve found it possible to still create my go-to ‘burnt orange smoky eye’ look, which I tend to do as a quick, day-to-day situation on my eyes, whilst I am also able to create some brand new, pretty cool looks. I’ve been loving using the green shades particularly and am planning on uploading a khaki-inspired smoky eye look very soon!!

The one thing I am a little disappointed with about this palette is the shimmer shades. In my MR, the shimmers were some of my favourite shades in the entire palette so I was super excited when I saw the colours that Subculture contained. Cube is a gorgeous white shimmer with a pink reflect whilst Electric is a greeny-gold shimmer (which I was most excited about). Whilst Adorn – a deep gold shimmer – had decent colour pay off (only when applied with my finger), the other two were practically invisible on the eye. I’ve tried applying them dry, wet, with different brushes and my finger and each time the result is just as poor. Because of this, I tend to use the mattes from this palette then dip into my Z palette for a more pigmented shimmer shadow.

Overall, I’d rate this palette a solid 7/10. I love ABH and will continue to buy their eyeshadow palettes in the future. Whilst I’m not LIVING for this palette, I do still like it but it hasn’t topped my MR.

7 thoughts on “ABH Subculture: First Impressions”

I was initially disappointed by Cube and Electric too but honestly they just need warming up a bit and they work beautifully, it’s like they have a layer on top but once that’s gone the shadows are beautiful to work with! X

Cube and Electric really don’t work well with a setting spray especially with this top layer it creates a resistance if that makes sense so i rubbed that bit off and then the colours worked really well x